Global Warming

[Tiggy]

I'm pretty sure the graph you used is showing that the mean temperature anomaly of 1951-1980 vs. 1998-2009, which isn't what Grim was arguing. If you want to see the mean temperature after 1998 compared to 1998, you'd need to use a base time of1998-1998, and a time interval of 1998-2009. You also failed to use the ocean temperatures, which is a pretty significant oversight. The correct map is at this link.

You're right, I forgot to include ocean in my first graph. My bad. But even with ocean added in and using 1998 as a baseline instead of the standard 1950, you still get a considerable positive rise in the global mean temperature over the last 10 years. (see pic) Only in the last two years has the global trend been reversing, which you see happening occasionally in the long term trend line.

I'd also like to point out that, for the past 10 years, at least, the temperature has been rising the fastest in the poles (See the map I posted.) As such, methane production isn't correlated to temperature increase.

That is far too simplistic a statement to make. You have to look at the detailed models of the changes in atmospheric flows and ocean currents over the last decade too. All the available data shows that both CO2 and methane are certainly partially responsible for the rise.

I'll also point that your map directly contradicts tin foil hat guy's claim here. So which is correct?

- T

[odis]

i used to be a roofer... 6 years ago we could not work between 11:30 and 1:30 because it was too hot... 3 years ago we could work the whole day through with little more than soaked towels/hats wraped around our heads. this year i dont think i would have had a problem at all.

i dont need a scientist to try and tell me our enviroment is changing. i work outside most of my life even now that i am no longer a roofer. i dont get the benefits of an AC, nor do i get the benefits of the funrace. when i wake up every morning i put on an assortment of clothing to keep me warm/cool and bring a change of clothes just in case. the earth, at least connecticut, is not warming and hasn't been since 2003. granted the earth's temperature is fluctuating but that hardly constitues getting hotter.

the real question is if we have anything to do with it and here is the folly: we can't know. underground lava currents have a lot to do with our surface temperatures. commets exploding in our atmosphere make things warmer. clouds at night keep things warm but clouds during the day keep things cooler. there is no way you can simply say well if we cut down our CO2 emissions the world will cool off because there are too many variables and many of them are not measured. making laws thte way the united states government wants to do is like denying a random person the keys to your car for the sole purpose that you dont know if they would get into an accident. there are more realistic reasons for this decision but strangely they aren't the ones talked about.

[Tiggy]

i dont need a scientist to try and tell me our enviroment is changing. i work outside most of my life even now that i am no longer a roofer. i dont get the benefits of an AC, nor do i get the benefits of the funrace. when i wake up every morning i put on an assortment of clothing to keep me warm/cool and bring a change of clothes just in case. the earth, at least connecticut, is not warming and hasn't been since 2003. granted the earth's temperature is fluctuating but that hardly constitues getting hotter.

Yep. Earth's climate is a hugely complex dynamic system. There are many local fluctuations and local trend reversals in the overall picture. That's why scientists gather data from as many different points as they can - land sensors, ocean sensors, ice cap sensors, weather balloons, spacecraft sensors - and combine them all to see the big global picture. And the big global picture is going up.

That's also why it's so dishonest to narrowly focus on one individual area or one short term trend and claim that is indicative of the whole long term trend. Sadly, that's all one particular tin foil hat wearing member here seems to be able to do.

Remember, anyone who purposefully omits contradictory data is simply not to be trusted on anything.

there is no way you can simply say well if we cut down our CO2 emissions the world will cool off because there are too many variables and many of them are not measured.

No one from the environmentalist side is saying that, that's tin foil hat guy's strawman. All we are doing is trying to reduce a proven contributor to the well documented problem.

If you were obese the doctor may recommend cutting out the Krispy Kremes. Cutting them out won't automatically make you thin, but they will get rid of part of the problem.

- T

[odis]

Yep. Earth's climate is a hugely complex dynamic system. There are many local fluctuations and local trend reversals in the overall picture. That's why scientists gather data from as many different points as they can - land sensors, ocean sensors, ice cap sensors, weather balloons, spacecraft sensors - and combine them all to see the big global picture. And the big global picture is going up.

That's also why it's so dishonest to narrowly focus on one individual area or one short term trend and claim that is indicative of the whole long term trend. Sadly, that's all one particular tin foil hat wearing member here seems to be able to do.

Remember, anyone who purposefully omits contradictory data is simply not to be trusted on anything.

- T

yes but i want to see data on all gasses in our atmosphere, all light let in by our atmosphere relative to the time of day (aka constant readings even at night), surface temps, underground temps, and the temperature of nearby water sources. to my knowledge, most of these things aren't being taken into account.

[Augustine2004]

Glenn, say 2 nonlinear systems, both identical. Present one with an input that can be taken to represent the yearly variation of Northern-Hemisphere insolation. The other system instead gets an input that likewise represents the Southern insolation. May possibly not one system's output will have a different trend than the other?

[grmorton]

Glenn, say 2 nonlinear systems, both identical. Present one with an input that can be taken to represent the yearly variation of Northern-Hemisphere insolation. The other system instead gets an input that likewise represents the Southern insolation. May possibly not one system's output will have a different trend than the other?

It depends upon the phase space of the two isolated systems. One thing is clear, the earth's climate has cycled between rather fixed points for hundreds of millions of years. The entire earth has not frozen, nor burnt up. That means that in the nonlinear phase space, the attractors are such that it is hard to go too far in one direction or the other. "Too far" of course does need some definition and will differ for different people

Now, the problem really is that the NH and SH are not isolated from each other. They are part of one big system. It is clear that there is an out-of-phase relationship between the high Arctic and the Antarctic, at least for the past 2 million years. When Antarctica gets warm, in general, the arctic cools and vice versa. So there is something to be said for your objection in the sense that the absolute temperature trend over the long haul could be different for the different hemispheres.

But, if CO2 is the dangerous thing that we are told it is, and it is working everywhere equally, and it has caused a .4 deg rise since 1970, then without it, Antarctica would have cooled 1.8 deg C since 1970 and the North would have warmed only about 1 deg, meaning We still had warming that was not due to CO2. Indeed it means that most of the warming isn't due to CO2

[MrManNo1]

You're right, I forgot to include ocean in my first graph. My bad. But even with ocean added in and using 1998 as a baseline instead of the standard 1950, you still get a considerable positive rise in the global mean temperature over the last 10 years. (see pic) Only in the last two years has the global trend been reversing, which you see happening occasionally in the long term trend line.

Not according to the map I posted. The map I posted shows that the mean temperature from 1998-2009 is lower than the mean temperature of 1998. There's really no way around that. I'm not really sure where the data from the pic you used was. Mine was directly from the NASA site you provided, which seems to contradict your pic.

That is far too simplistic a statement to make. You have to look at the detailed models of the changes in atmospheric flows and ocean currents over the last decade too. All the available data shows that both CO2 and methane are certainly partially responsible for the rise.

Perhaps partially, but your map and post suggested that it was a significant contributor, which is what I was pointing out. Nowhere did I say it wasn't a cause, only that it wasn't correlated. If there's no correlation, but there is a cause, then the effect is usually not very significant compared to other sources.

I'll also point that your map directly contradicts tin foil hat guy's claim here. So which is correct?

Glenn's picture showed the trends from 1970-2007 (you can see the time interval and base time used at the top of the map), which is not relevant to Grim's claim of cooling over the past decade.

[Augustine2004]

Phase locking is a frequently observed occurrence. An example is that the mensural periods of female roommates will after months 'lock' up.

Why the south is out of phase with the north is quite obvious, but even so there's phase locking, is there not? Or should be? I don't know what's going on with all those trends.

I doubt Tiggy does, yet he is quite authorative in proclaiming CO2 is the great monstrous villian.

[grmorton]

Phase locking is a frequently observed occurrence. An example is that the mensural periods of female roommates will after months 'lock' up.

Why the south is out of phase with the north is quite obvious, but even so there's phase locking, is there not? Or should be? I don't know what's going on with all those trends.

I doubt Tiggy does, yet he is quite authorative in proclaiming CO2 is the great monstrous villian.

All hysteriacs are quite authoritative in their proclamations and they don't want anyone else to say anything in public that disagrees with them. That really tics them off, that one would dare to challenge their majesties.

This has been a productive day for new ways to look at the data. I thank you for the discussion on the chart. I will post here one part of an upcoming blog entry (Maybe in a week or so the rest of the post will go online.

It is really instructive to look at the corrections, to see what patterns they have geographically. To that end, I went to <a href="http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/">this site</a> and made a map using the Hadley/Reyn Ocean data plus the Unadjusted land data from 1880-2008 data. Next the gridded data was downloaded. I then made the same map using the GISS adjusted data and downloaded it. Then, after subtracting one grid from another, one can see what the magnitude of the adjustments are. And that is where it gets really interesting. I ploted both latitude and longitude distributions of the GISS corrections. I will only post the latitude distribution of the corrections here. I am saving the longitudinal distribution for my blog in a few days.

Doing all this takes a heck of a lot of work, which is why I think the climatologists get away with the scams that they do. No one goes to the trouble to really critically examine the data save for evidence examiners like me.

Let me point out first off, that the only reason one corrects or adjusts raw data is if one thinks it is wrong. Given that, data with bigger adjustments are considered to be in greater error; data with small adjustments contain lesser error.

In the case of a thermometer, if one adds degrees due to some adjustment, then one is implicitly stating that the temperature read too cool. If one subtracts degrees, one is implicitly saying that the thermometer reads too hot.

Now look at the picture below. THe GISS editors are acting as if thermomters in the southern hemisphere work better than thermometers in the northern hemisphere because they add degrees to the northern thermometers. Does anyone really beleive this?

Are the laws of physics different in the southern hemisphere?

[Augustine2004]

Glenn is going to want to kick me into that lake (video). Tiggy is going to want to dive and save me from drowning. http://videos.komando.com:80/2009/09...oreno-glacier/
On average, I'm going to be OK, as before.

[grmorton]

Glenn is going to want to kick me into that lake (video). Tiggy is going to want to dive and save me from drowning. http://videos.komando.com:80/2009/09...oreno-glacier/
On average, I'm going to be OK, as before.

That was wonderful. I had seen it several years ago. When I was in Antarctica last January with my son, he videoed a glacier ice cliff collapse in HD. His video is better than mine. I was videoing it and realized that the wave coming in was over my head. We all scrambled up the beach. BUt thanks to spherical divergence, the wave height was smaller by the time it reached the beach.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBouBWjtSN8

Any comment on the latitudinal display of temperature correction?

[Augustine2004]

Any comment on the latitudinal display of temperature correction?

I'm trying to think of an explanation why the slope at either end is so steep and oppositely up or down, assuming no finagling. I have no comment otherwise because I'm still baffled.

[grmorton]

I'm trying to think of an explanation why the slope at either end is so steep and oppositely up or down, assuming no finagling. I have no comment otherwise because I'm still baffled.

You are welcome to repeat the work I did. I certainly didn't finagle it. Could I have screwed up? Always possible, but I don't think so. It wasn't that hard. Download the grids for 2 maps, corrected and uncorrected, subtract them and then average over each latitude band.

The problem I see is this is the kind of crapola work that no one sees, that they probably haven't seen, but it is quite clear to me, that assuming there is no error in my work, their editing is simply nutso

[Tiggy]

I doubt Tiggy does, yet he is quite authorative in proclaiming CO2 is the great monstrous villian.

LOL! yep, it's all me. Yet study after study after study backs up what I've been saying.

The proportionality of global warming to cumulative carbon emissions
H. Damon Matthews, Nathan P. Gillett, Peter A. Stott, Kirsten Zickfeld
Nature 459, 829-832 (11 June 2009)

Abstract: The global temperature response to increasing atmospheric CO2 is often quantified by metrics such as equilibrium climate sensitivity and transient climate response1. These approaches, however, do not account for carbon cycle feedbacks and therefore do not fully represent the net response of the Earth system to anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Climate–carbon modelling experiments have shown that: (1) the warming per unit CO2 emitted does not depend on the background CO2 concentration2; (2) the total allowable emissions for climate stabilization do not depend on the timing of those emissions3, 4, 5; and (3) the temperature response to a pulse of CO2 is approximately constant on timescales of decades to centuries3, 6, 7, 8. Here we generalize these results and show that the carbon–climate response (CCR), defined as the ratio of temperature change to cumulative carbon emissions, is approximately independent of both the atmospheric CO2 concentration and its rate of change on these timescales. From observational constraints, we estimate CCR to be in the range 1.0–2.1 °C per trillion tonnes of carbon (Tt C) emitted (5th to 95th percentiles), consistent with twenty-first-century CCR values simulated by climate–carbon models. Uncertainty in land-use CO2 emissions and aerosol forcing, however, means that higher observationally constrained values cannot be excluded. The CCR, when evaluated from climate–carbon models under idealized conditions, represents a simple yet robust metric for comparing models, which aggregates both climate feedbacks and carbon cycle feedbacks. CCR is also likely to be a useful concept for climate change mitigation and policy; by combining the uncertainties associated with climate sensitivity, carbon sinks and climate–carbon feedbacks into a single quantity, the CCR allows CO2-induced global mean temperature change to be inferred directly from cumulative carbon emissions.

Full text

Ever notice how tin foil hat guy never provides any references for his woo from the primary scientific literature? It's always "I took part of this data set, and part of that data set, and combined them, then divided by the square root of pi, then factored in phases of the moon and my cat's litter box volume and VOILA, global warming is proven false!!"

You'll understand if I prefer the primary peer-reviewed scientific literature over charts drawn up on a wingnut's home computer.

- T

[Tiggy]

Glenn is going to want to kick me into that lake (video). Tiggy is going to want to dive and save me from drowning. http://videos.komando.com:80/2009/09...oreno-glacier/
On average, I'm going to be OK, as before.

Thanks, that's a neat video. But I noticed this on the lead in:

The Perito Moreno Glacier is in Argentina. It’s one of the few glaciers in the region that’s not retreating.

If the world is not warming, why do you suppose all the rest of the glaciers in the region are retreating?

Why do you suppose the large majority of glaciers in the world have shown substantial and accelerated retreating in the last 100+ years?

Worldwide glacier retreat

One of the most visually compelling examples of recent climate change is the retreat of glaciers in mountain regions. In the U.S. this is perhaps most famously observed in Glacier National Park, where the terminus of glaciers have retreated by several kilometers in the past century, and could be gone before the next century (see e.g. the USGS web site, here, and here). In Europe, where there is abundant historical information (in the form of paintings, photographs, as well as more formal record-keeping), retreat has been virtually monotonic since the mid 19th century (see e.g. images of the glaciers at Chamonix). These changes are extremely well documented, and no serious person questions that they demonstrate long term warming of climate in these regions. New work published in Science (“Extracting a Climate Signal from 169 Glacier Records”) highlights these results, and uses them to make a new estimate of global temperature history since about 1600 A.D., which agrees rather well with previous, independent temperature reconstructions.

RealClimate source

Any ideas?

- T